


It's Not Goodbye Forever

by MeAgain



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Growing Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 05:30:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7421782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeAgain/pseuds/MeAgain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In this alternate universe, Petunia takes Harry in as a second son and makes sure he knows everything she knew about his mother and father, so that when Hagrid comes for the Boy Who Lived, Harry is ready to start at Hogwarts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Not Goodbye Forever

It was a cold morning, the kind that settles around your shoulders as if it could replace a hastily applied cardigan. Petunia opened her door and had a moment of sheer panic when she realized there was something very large and round on the porch, where there was normally only a doormat. She clamped a hand to her thin chest, reassuring her heart, and bent down to see what the bundle held. This time, her heart did not stop, but rather clenched; there was a tiny baby swaddled in all those blankets. A baby with a thick head of black hair, and a zigzag cut on his olive skinned forehead. She looked around instinctively, though clearly the baby had been there some time—in this chill! —and saw only a tabby cat that disdainfully picked up and walked off, displaying a taunting tail as it did. She held one shaking finger under the baby’s nose and breathed a sigh of relief as she felt a gentle stream of air. Still alive, thank goodness. She picked up the bundle and, as the blankets shifted, she saw a letter poke out of the top layer.   
She carried the bundle into the sitting room and sat with the child on the couch, cradling him just as she had learned to do with her own baby boy. As she rocked him, she pulled out the letter and, carefully, most one-handed, she opened it without jostling the child.   
If anyone had been around, they would have seen the composed, though already pale, face of Petunia Dursley twinge with the kind of pain only a deep and profound loss can cause. She dropped the letter, pressing her face into the blankets surrounding the sleeping child of her murdered sister, and wept.

 

It took Vernon exactly one millisecond to declare that they would certainly not be taking in the orphaned child of Petunia’s strange sister and her good-for-nothing husband. No sir, he would not stand for it, he would go to an orphanage, and why don’t these people take care of their own, anyways? Shouldn’t the child go be with those people? Petunia bore the tirade until Vernon had spent his ire and then handed him the letter. Her face was still swollen with tears.   
“He has to stay here, Vernon. He’s safe here.”  
“Well and that’s another thing!” Vernon spluttered. “Have a madman hunting down my family! I won’t stand for it!”   
“It says he’s gone…” Petunia reached for the letter, but Vernon was examining it closely. “Vernon, we can’t just abandon Lily’s—“  
“Blast, I won’t hear her name in this house, I won’t!” Vernon dropped his fist, with the letter in it, onto the table. “I won’t have anything to do with those people.”  
“It’s my sister’s boy.” Petunia trembled. “You don’t even know he’ll be like them.”  
“Oh he will, that kind of thing taints the blood, it spreads like a disease…” Vernon trailed off, catching the look on her face.   
“So am I diseased, Vernon?” Petunia asked, suddenly calm. The grief was quickly turning to anger. This was the last piece of the sister Petunia thought she’d put up with until they both lived to be bitter old women. Now…  
“I only meant…”  
“I share Lily’s blood.”  
“Dear, I meant to say that…”  
“It could’ve been me.” Petunia said, so finally that it sounded real even to her, even though she knew she didn’t have a drop of the blood that had turned Lily from the sweet baby girl into the powerful magical woman whom Petunia had envied so…  
Vernon visibly struggled to create words that would remedy his mistake.  
“I will keep the boy.” Petunia said, drawing on a boldness she hadn’t realized she had. “And if you won’t stand for it, you can stand outside.”  
She stood, baby in arms, and left the room. Only once she was out of view did she allow her body to shake freely, adrenaline coursing down her arms and into her knees. Kick her husband out, for a child? No. For Lily. Lily, who had always wanted to stay friends, to keep Petunia as close as they had been before it all changed…Lily, who still invited Petunia to her wedding. Lily, who was somehow gone forever, and whose child she held in her arms. Could it possibly be a farce? Could someone be pulling a prank?  
The baby wriggled as she climbed the stairs and she looked down into Lily’s eyes. She nearly dropped the child. No, this was unquestionably Lily’s child. No one who saw those eyes could doubt it. He had exactly the same eyes, set in the dark skin of the man Lily had married. The child was absolutely gorgeous.  
“Hello, Harry.” Petunia said. “I’m going to take care of you now.”

 

It was a bright morning, the kind that blinded even as it began, and ended in soporific heat. Two small boys ran around a rusty swing-set in a field that once held grass. The first was so skinny he might have disappeared if you looked at him sideways, and he had tiny round glasses perched on his nose. Black hair flopped all over his face and neck as he ran from the second boy. This one was meatier, but in the way that a puppy has big feet—someday, it will all look like it fits together more. He had shining blonde hair that reflected the sun. The boys were screaming with the laughter of a childhood spent in the calm care of a doting mother.   
That same mother was reading a book on the park bench nearby, ready to drop everything should something happen. Although she looked utterly calm, her insides were twisting and writhing, making concentrating on her book difficult. Her bookmark was an envelope. It was thick, and the broken seal bore a shield with four animals on it; a badger, a lion, a serpent, and an eagle.  
Petunia looked up at the boys with a soft, almost sad smile. Harry’s 11th birthday had been the day before. Although the quiet boy had made few friends, Dudley—with the boisterous charm and devilish wit that he’d inherited from his father—had secured some of his own friends to come and have a party. Harry was in different classes than Dudley; he had too much nervous energy, his teachers had said; he wouldn’t sit still and he was too disruptive. We have to put him in the special education classes, the principal told Petunia. Otherwise, no one will learn. She’d smiled the same almost-sad smile then. Lily had never sat still for anything as a child, either—and from what Petunia knew of the Potter boy, Harry would get into more trouble than anyone could imagine. Harry was kind, though; Petunia had made sure of that. Dudley had enjoyed throwing tantrums as a baby, and Harry would always toddle over and hug the wailing boy. Dudley had to learn to accept the tiny boy’s attempts at cuddling, and it had made Dudley a sweet boy in turn. Petunia had encouraged them, and her efforts had paid off. Dudley only had the most glowing remarks from his teachers; although he was a slow learner, he was honest and played well with the other children. Harry was by no means stupid, but he hid his brilliance under a cover of humility and charm. Yes, she had raised her boys well.  
And then the letter came.

Petunia had been waiting for it, of course; waiting eleven years. She remembered all too well the day Lily had been handed the same kind of envelope, with its beautiful seal and thick parchment; the one that had told her she would be leaving Petunia’s world forever, to learn things Petunia could never dream of understanding. She had been so bitter. Her best friend, her sweet baby sister, suddenly so special and talented and bright, leaving normal, boring Petunia to her normal, boring, non-magical life. Harry wouldn’t do that to Dudley (or to her). Petunia simply wouldn’t allow it. Harry knew, of course.  
Petunia had resolved from the very beginning, once she understood what would happen to the boy, to tell Harry everything about his parents. She couldn’t bear the thought of her tiny adopted son going to that far-off school, away from everything familiar, not knowing what he was walking into. Besides, it was good for Petunia. By telling Harry stories about Lily and the Potter boy—mostly Lily—Petunia was allowed to remember her sister. The stories started out as memories when Harry was a baby; she would tell him about the wedding, and Lily’s pranks as a child, and how Lily would always try to get Petunia to talk to her on summer holiday. She would remember the months when Lily stopped coming home, when her face lost its joy, when she grew hard and tired, and would tell Petunia she loved her, that she was going to fight for her, as if Petunia cared about some bloke going around gathering followers…until Lily told her this war that was starting was targeting people like her, like Lily, sweet Lily, she had gone to fight for the others like her and Petunia would wake in the night drenched in cold sweat from dreams of hooded figures holding sticks and shouting strange phrases and Lily taking her hand and screaming RUN, TUNY, RUN…  
Petunia shook herself, the sun suddenly not as warm as she had previously thought. No, she told Harry about the good memories, and then she made things up. She took the stories Lily tried to tell the family at the dinner table, when Petunia would pretend to ignore her, stories about strange creatures and bubbling caldrons and spells; she made up things to tell Harry about them, using his toys as fake wands to show him how Lily would swish hers through the air like a baton, delighting the boy who giggled and clapped long after he had started to speak.   
The letter said that, in order to ensure the safety of Harry Potter, a man named Hagrid would be coming to collect him and take him to the train. The letter assured her that the man would be utterly unmistakable. Petunia knew better than to argue. Even if she knew how to respond, she knew the letter-writer to be unshakeable in his ideas. Regardless of their shortcomings. 

 

It was a morning Petunia Evans would never forget, even when the details blurred together. She had woken early on the first morning of September to prepare a huge breakfast and a lunch that contained extra helpings of all Harry’s favourite foods. Dudley had spent the night before helping her frost a cake while Harry was watching their favourite TV show, completely oblivious. Dudley had misspelled “school” and Petunia had let him. Everything was laid out on the table when Harry started pulling his school trunk down the stairs—Petunia heard the THUMP, THUMP, THUMP before she ever saw the black hair come running into the kitchen. Dudley, woken by the noise, barreled down the stairs after his adopted brother and they both stopped short at the unusual amount of food on the table. Petunia was no great cook, but she did know a few things, and having more than a bowl of cereal or a plate of eggs on the table at breakfast was (especially to two young boys) nothing short of miraculous.   
The boys sat and started shoving everything in sight into their mouths. Petunia wanted to smile, even laugh, but there was a tension in her chest that kept her from showing anything but poorly concealed fear. The knock at the door nearly caused her heart to fail.  
It was an unusually loud knock, at that. Petunia went to the door, taking deep breaths as she went, and peeked out the curtain before opening it. She almost didn’t believe her eyes.  
He will be utterly unmistakable. Well, he certainly was.  
She opened the door and the man outside stooped down to look at her through the frame.  
“Hullo, Ms. Evans.” The man said, extending a very large hand. Petunia took it very hesitantly; it might be more accurate to say it engulfed hers.   
“You must be Mr. Hagrid.” She squeaked. The man nodded.  
“ ‘At’s me, alright.” Hagrid bent own further to look down the hall. “And how’s ‘Arry?”  
“He’s just eating breakfast, I’m sure he’ll be right along.” Petunia trembled. On cue, Harry and Dudley tiptoed around the corner to stare at the man at the door. Petunia waved them over, and held both boys in front of her, shielding them with her hands on their shoulders.   
“Ah, yeah. You’ll be ‘Arry, then, won’t you?” Hagrid beamed at the boy. Harry gulped, looking up so much he was in danger of injuring his neck.   
“Where are we going?” Harry demanded suddenly.  
“Blimey, Harry, did yeh never wonder where ye parents learned it all?” Hagrid gasped, looking askance at Petunia. She shook her head, bewildered.  
“Learnt what?” Harry pressed. Hagrid glared at the helpless Petunia and bent all the way down to Harry’s level.  
“You’re a wizard, Harry.”  
Harry beamed. “I know. I meant, what did they learn? I want to know more.”


End file.
